New Faces of Bluegrass.....Pictured above are three talented gentlemen I met at the Honey Harvest Festival. From left to right, Paul Bradshaw on banjo, Matt Geiger on guitar, and John Leatherman on mandolin. They call themselves "The Iron Mountain Trio"

This weekend turned out pretty well, in spite of an inauspicious beginning. I had a day off from the tile shop, and was determined to make good use of it. Specifially...

my plan was to make salsa and can it to gve to people at Christmas time. I had all of my equipment. However, since we have moved approximately 17 billion times in the course of our marriage, my stock pot had sticky tape all over it. It had been pressed into service as storage for my crab mallets, corn holders, and napkin holders which are shaped like fish.

Anyway, I started to try to take the tape off my pot, and realized that it was going to be a big deal. I also realized that I couldn't just leave it on there, since it would likely catch on fire. The Hub came by and squirted it with some WD40 which resulted in the tape going from gummy to slimey and the whole kitchen smelling like WD40.

I decided to go out and buy another pot.

Now, I hate Walmart. I hate everything about it, but I do know that they carry canning supplies year round. So off I went to Blue Babylon where I located their pot supply. They had exactly 2 kinds. Inexpensive enamalware types which are not suitable for my glass stove top, and really expensive aluminum types, which were $40! The reason why a stock pot is nessasary when you can fruit or acidic vegetables is that you have to lower a rack 12" in diameter into boiling water....and the water must cover the lids of the jars you are processing. These expensive type of pots were 12" in diameter on the bottom, but there was a bevel to the inside edge. I couldn't tell if the canning rack would sit down in there or not. The thought of paying $40 for a $15 stock pot was galling enough, but the idea of having to come to Walmart AGAIN to return it was too much.

Really, I don't know what their marketing strategy is. I think they feel that if they stack items so high above your head that you are sure the whole aisle is going to fall in on you at any moment, make the aisles so narrow that you cannot pass another patron without making intimate contact, and create accoustics which amplify the screams of little kids, stressed mothers, and conversations worthy of the Maury Povich show you will just throw something into your cart and buy it in desperation to get out of the place. Note to Walmart: it doesn't work with me. I was just in desperation to get out of the place. So I left.

Still, I was very frustrated, so I called Friend Will who is always willing to listen to me vent, stalwart friend that he is. I talked with him while wandering around Target, which was out of pots and Baughers which had herbs but not pots, and then announced.

"Well, that's it, I'm going home with no pot"

"It's terrible when you have to go home without pot" he said sympathetically. Hmm.

So I abandoned the whole salsa making project. When I got home, Scott B. was visiting The Hub and they were discussing framing and matting prints for the CMPG Gallery Show We all decided to go over the the Farm Museum where a steam show was going on, and where I picked up the little blue rubber snake I liked so much. ( see yesterday's entry) It was basically a tractor show and flea market, but there were a lot of good photo opportunities, especially for the guys. We had a good time and I found a bed spread in the exact color I'd been looking for for $4.

The next day we went to the Honey Harvest Festival in the afternoon. That is where I met the three talented guys in the photograph above. They were bravely competing against an event announcer who was in love with the sound of his own voice, playing bluegrass and singing in harmony. What voices! Regular readers know that I am that rarest of all birds: the type that loves bluegrass but doesn't like country. But country is often the only fare at these types of fairs. Bluegrass music, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is experiencing a renaisance, as artists like Ricky Scaggs get back to their roots. Younger people are becoming familiar with the art form, but it's still unusual to see young guys like this who are so accomplished. The vocal harmonies required of a bluegrass trio or quartet are not easy: yet these guys sang together as naturally as if they were brothers. And indeed, it turned out they had been singing together for a long time - 11 years. I wish them a lot of success.

All in all I felt like I got back to my roots, and least part of them this weekend. After all, it was my father's dad, Pop-Pop who knew all about the health benefits of honey. And it's that side of the family that listens to bluegrass & folk. When I was 8 I used to play my father's records over and over. He had Johnny Cash and Peter, Paul, & Mary, and Marty Robbins. It was all songs about broken hearts, cheating hearts, lost love, alcoholism, workplace injustice, jail, men pining away and dying or becoming lost on the endless road....but it's all okay, because in all of these songs, Heaven is our home. And Our Eternal Home is the fiddle and the hope to balance out that high lonesome sound you either love or hate.

Good Lord, no wonder I used to suffer from depression.